Wednesday, March 30

Typically, last night's shallow digression
into the realm of game theory took considerable time away from other,
healthier pursuits.

+

mutual assured destruction?

us, them

World powers in ideological, economic, and territorial conflict, each
possessing massive nuclear armament. Not intended as an endorsement of actual
us-them thinking, which tends to suck.

L

Launch those puppies.

~L

Don't.

An assumption: A full-scale nuclear assault is going to have
overwhelmingly negative outcomes for anybody actually trying to live on the
surface of the Earth, sufficient to outweigh the gains from reducing a rival
power's territory to so much radioactive kipple even should they be unable (or
unwilling) to retaliate. Since a first strike is certain to at least
make things suck for everyone, and likely to result in an equally destructive
response, no rational actor has any incentive to fire first.

This is not exactly an illustration of MAD, which asserts that retaliation
is certain (this says nothing directly about the probability of a
decision, it only suggests the results), but it is not unrelated. I find
myself less than satisfied with the whole thing, and resolve some day to
understand why on a more rigorous level.